Draft Rules For Vietnam In Suffolk
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The lottery would establish the priority of call based on the birth dates of registrants. The first men drafted would be those turning age 20 during the calendar year of the lottery. For example, if a draft were held in 2020, those men born in 2000 would be considered first.
Most draft-eligible men who avoided conscription took advantage of legal deferments extended to students, fathers, certain professions and people deemed physically or mentally “unfit” for service.
The United States military conscripted approximately 1.9 million service personnel into their ranks over the course of the Vietnam War. Commonly known as the draft, conscription had been conducted in the U.S. through the Selective Service System (SSS) since 1917.
Because the Vietnam War was primarily a ground war, 82 percent of American servicemen who fought in Vietnam were members of the Army and the Marines, and two-thirds of those soldiers were drafted.
Before the lottery was implemented in the latter part of the Vietnam conflict, there was no system in place to determine order of call besides the fact that men between the ages of 18 and 26 were vulnerable to being drafted.
Myth: Common belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted. Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.
~ The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old. 12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old. ~ 5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
The various exemptions which draft-eligible men could use to avoid service, such as still being in university education or being medically unfit, were thought to allow better-connected and middle class men to evade the draft more easily than working class or minority men.
There were 366 blue plastic capsules containing birth dates placed in a large glass container and drawn by hand to assign order-of-call numbers to all men within the 18-26 age range specified in Selective Service law.
